Shadow of a Doubt
by Tracy Diane Miller
Summary: Innocent or guilty? Victim or criminal? That's the question for Brigatti.


Shadow of A Doubt  
  
Summary: This very short story is another missing scene to "Fatal Edition".  
  
Disclaimer: Early Edition characters belong to whoever created them. No copyright infringement intended. No profit is being made. Some of the dialogue that appears in this story is not my own, but belongs to the writer of the Early Edition episode "Fatal Edition."  
  
Author: Tracy Diane Miller  
  
E-mail address: tdmiller82@hotmail.com  
  
  
  
Shadow of A Doubt  
  
His gaze fixed on her doubting eyes as she methodically began dialing the number. She didn't believe him. She was going to turn him in. He had come to her a desperate man clinging to a bastion of hope that any feeling she had for him would be enough to convince her of his innocence, that it would be enough for her to answer his plea and help him.  
  
He was wrong.  
  
With his eyes still focused on her, he began to back slowly towards the door to make his escape. She detected his retreat, pulled out her gun, and directed the barrel at him.  
  
"Hobson, stop!" She commanded.  
  
Her words halted his steps. His mud green eyes locked with her eyes before twinkling with a mixture of defiance and exhaustion. "Or what?" He challenged.  
  
His words, the challenge and the twinge of sexiness in his voice as well as his facial gesture, had affected her, though she wouldn't admit it. She continued pointing the gun at him.  
  
He, however, turned around and slowly made his way towards the door. He knew that she wouldn't shoot him in the back. In an inexplicable way, he trusted her not to shoot him even though she didn't trust him enough to help him.  
  
The door closed behind him. She stood there for a few minutes, gun still trained at a figure that was no longer there. Her heart was beating rapidly. Finally, she put down her gun, proceeded to the phone, and dialed the police station. Yet, before anyone could respond to the call, she placed the phone back down on its cradle. She couldn't turn him in.  
  
She walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. A chilled bottle of Chardonnay, 1987 it said, stared back at her. She hesitated for a moment before removing the wine. Retrieving a glass from the cabinet over the sink and picking up the corkscrew, she proceeded to the living room. Her body felt like dead weight as she plopped onto the couch. She opened the bottle and poured some wine into her glass. Her eyes studied the liquid.  
  
In vino veritas. In wine, there's truth, so people say.  
  
But at that moment, she wondered what truth she would find in this glass of wine. Answers. Did she really expect answers to be hidden in a glass of wine or was she just using the wine to numb her sensations because she didn't want to feel? She was a police officer charged with protecting the citizens of Chicago from the seedy underbelly, the malcontents who blatantly disregarded the law. He was a suspect in a murder case where mountains of evidence pointed at his guilt. He was found over the victim's body. He had means, motive, and opportunity as Paul had reminded her. The lie detector test showed that he had a propensity for deception. And he had escaped from custody. All these factors suggested a criminal mens rea and screamed for his capture and his judgment in a court of law.  
  
But she couldn't turn off her feelings for him, control her emotions and that made her confused and angry with herself. Maybe she wasn't looking for answers after all. Maybe she was looking for a shadow of a doubt, a tiny yet potent thread of his innocence, a reason to disregard her years of professional training and listen to that voice in the back of her head that told her she should believe him and help him.  
  
She took a sip of her wine. Then she mentally reviewed the evidence once more. Why had he come to the train yard that night? Somehow she couldn't buy the excuse he had given during his interrogation that he was taking a walk or that he liked trains. Why had he agreed to the lie detector test if he were guilty? In all her years on the force, she had heard how some defendants who were guilty could manipulate the results of a lie detector test to suit their purposes. After all, the lie detector test was controlled by fluctuations in emotions; control one's emotions, and control the test. But if Hobson were guilty and this was the reason he agreed to the test to mask his guilt, why wasn't he able to control his emotions? And why had he called Scanlon's cell phone voice mail to warn the reporter not to go to the train yard or suggested that the police provide protection for Scanlon? There was some piece missing, something that she wasn't seeing. She couldn't believe Paul's "Jekyll and Hyde" theory. Hobson was more peanut butter and jelly or baseball and apple pie. Sure, he was odd and secretive, but there was no crime in that. Everyone had secrets.  
  
He's not a killer, her inner voice insisted.  
  
Then why had he escaped from custody if he were innocent? She wondered.  
  
He saw all the evidence against him and he was scared. Fear motivated his actions not guilt, the inner voice argued persuasively.  
  
She took another sip from her wine. Her years as a cop had made her so jaded. She knew that there were scores of guilty people sitting in prison who screamed miscarriage of justice. However, she was also aware that there were some innocent people serving time because they had been betrayed by a hardened criminal justice system. She realized that she didn't want Hobson to become a statistic for the failure of the law to protect the innocent.  
  
She placed her glass on the coffee table and rose from the couch, her jaw set with determination. Tomorrow she would re-examine the evidence. She would talk to the medical examiner and see if there was any physical evidence from the scene that pointed to anyone other than Hobson. Then she would re-examine everything again with a fine tooth comb.  
  
The shadow of a doubt grew stronger as it embraced her intuition. Maybe it was just emotion talking, memories of a honeymoon suite and the ecstasy of his lips on hers. But whatever it was, she was going to help him.  
  
The End. 


End file.
